The Fall and Rise of Bradley Wiggins

The finger of Sky's Chris Froome points to the new race favourite.

A little under two months have passed since Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky’s hopes of general classification glory in the Tour de France were ended, after an innocuous accident resulting in a broken collarbone and subsequent retirement from the race. Team director Dave Brailsford had stated that Wiggins was in fantastic form, his ‘numbers’ were superb and was coming off the back of an amazing win in the Criterium Dauphine de Libere, pushing Cadel Evans into second place. (Evans was to be the eventual winner of the 2011 Tour de France).

Many riders who fall by the wayside will always say ‘what if this’ and ‘what if that’ but there was a general feeling that Wiggins could at least challenge for a podium spot, if not for an actual win in cycling’s premier road race.

Sky regrouped after this low point, and managed another stage win through Edvald Boassen Hagen but the time lost whilst waiting for Wiggins after the crash meant that any hopes of a decent G.C. placing for the rest of the team were gone.

Sky decided subsequent to this that Wiggins’ form could not be left to waste, and entered him into the Vuelta a Espana, the Spanish version of the Tour, and the third great stage race of the season, (the Giro de Italia is raced first).

A shocking start to the Vuelta in the team time trial set back all of the teams hopes. In a stage where Sky were expected to do well, if not win, then at least put some serious time into their chief rivals who are more specialised mountain climbers. (Mountain specialists are seen to do better at the Vuelta than the Giro and the Tour). An untimely crash in stage one left Wiggins with a time deficit on most if not all of the riders expected to challenge. Wiggins and his team rode on and whilst languishing off the pace did look strong.

Coming into stage ten’s individual time trial, Wiggins was expected to reduce his deficit, (of around one minute) and put time into his rivals to pull on the race leaders Red Jersey. He did not factor in the time trial of his life by team mate Christopher Froome, who whilst only finishing in second place on the stage (to Wiggins’ third) he became one of only a handful of British riders to lead this illustrious race.

The next big mountain stage saw Froome sacrifice himself for team leader Wiggins who took over as leader (by seven seconds to Froome) showing how much faith the team leadership and its riders have in their main man.

The odds of this scene being repeated in Madrid have tumbled.

So to Saturday’s stage, Wiggins was expected to suffer. With 2010 winner Vincenzo Nibali having reduced the gap to just four seconds, (with time bonuses for the stage winner) the race lead was expected to change again. This was not the case as both Froome and Wiggins took the race by the scruff of the neck and on the one year anniversary of the death of one of Sky’s soigneurs (Txema Gonzalez) ripped the race apart to distance themselves from virtually all of the contenders.

The race is far from over, Wiggins is only one accident, one bad day from falling off his perch, and with some of the mountains having a ridiculous gradient of over 20% including the finish of Sundays stage 15 it is all still possible. But even if he is to lose some time, Wiggins now has to be considered one of, if not the favourite to complete his transformation from Olympic gold medal track cyclist, to elite road racing champion.